When color photographic materials are kept as records semipermanently, it is demanded that the extent of light-fading and dark-fading should be suppressed as much as possible and that the color balance of three-color fading among the yellow, magenta, and cyan dye images should be retained as in the initial state. However, the extent of light fading and the extent of dark fading are different between a yellow dye image, a magenta dye image, and a cyan dye image, and after storage for a long period of time the balance of fading among the three colors becomes lost and the qualities of the dye images unfavorably deteriorate.
Although the extent of light-fading and dark-fading varies naturally depending on the couplers used and other factors, with respect to dark-fading, in many cases, it is liable to occur in the order of a cyan dye image, a yellow dye image, and then a magenta dye image, and in particular the extent of dark-fading of a cyan dye image is great in comparison with the other dye images. Dark-fading of a yellow dye image in an environment high in humidity is greatest sometimes. Further, when a photographic material is stored under such conditions, mold occurs on the photographic material surface and the cyan dye image and the yellow dye image are faded extremely by organic acids (e.g., acetic acid, citric acid, tartaric acid, and gluconic acid) secreted from the fungi, thereby leaving red spots in the image, for example, of a color print. Such trouble is often found in areas high in temperature and humidity, for example in southern districts of Japan (e.g., in the Okinawa and Shikoku districts), and in the case of important photographs that are desired to be kept as records, such as wedding photographs, although a measure of laminating the photographs is taken, not only is the operation complicated and laborious but also deterioration of the image quality cannot be obviated. Even if mold does not occur, when the pH of the surface of the produced photographic image is low due to the type or scatter of conditions of the development processing, bleach-fix processing, or stabilization processing, fading of the cyan dye image and the yellow dye image is also facilitated.
In order to solve such problems, with respect to cyan dye images, for example, JP-B ("JP-B" means examined Japanese patent application) No. 45017/1983 and JP-A ("JP-A" means unexamined published Japanese patent application) Nos. 75447/1987, 129853/1987, 172353/1987, 196657/1987, and 21447/1989, and with respect to yellow dye images, JP-A Nos. 50048/1989, 50049/1989, and 4041/1986 disclose the use of cyclic ether compounds or epoxy-group-containing compounds, and although it is recognized that these compounds exhibit a certain effect for improving dark-fading and acid fading, the improvement is still unsatisfactory, and some photographic materials suffer such a harmful effect that fading or insufficient color restoration due to leuco dyes formation of cyan dyes, which are formed when the photographic materials are processed in a bleach-fixing bath containing exhausted solution.
The inventors further studied epoxy-group-containing compounds and found that, by using a sparingly water-soluble epoxy compound with a specific structure, a great effect on improvement in dark-fading and acid-fading could be attained. However, it has been found that photographic material containing such a sparingly water-soluble epoxy compound becomes poor in latent-image keeping with time after production of the photographic material, and that it has a harmful effect that the sensitivity and gradation change greatly depending on the period from the exposure to the development. On the other hand, nowadays, in big commercial photofinishing laboratories, due to the division of printing steps there is a tendency that the period from exposure to development is not always constant and the securement of latent-image keeping has become an important subject.